FanFuture policy and decisions point to, and flow from, our values as shared in our community guidelines.
We desire to Be Creative & Compassionate
We believe the future should be fun & fair, beautiful & just, expansive & inclusive.
Our community—and our campaigns—will embrace and reflect this vision.
As a first threshold, campaigns must adhere to our TOS which include basic, reasonable prohibitions.
More importantly though, campaigns must also demonstrate alignment with our community values and we will generally assess each campaign on it’s own presentation and goals, rather than on an assessment of either the campaign founder or creator.
By focusing on the content and context of the campaign over the character of the people behind it, we intentionally seek to keep our tent broad and welcoming to all—extending the offer to join in our positive collective effort to everyone, regardless of their particular views and values. It encourages constructive and creative dialog across ideologies and worldviews while ensuring the tangible impact of our platform is equally positive.
Tough cases will present, where Founders push boundaries to launch campaigns targeting controversial—even morally loathsome—Creators.
In such cases, we will look to the content and character of the campaign itself in deciding whether to permit the campaign.
We will look not only to the explicitly stated goals and the presentation of the campaign but also to the broader community conversation in support of the campaign and the likelihood that the successful goal will continue to align with our community guidelines.
It is possible, even inevitable, that Fans will discover campaigns which feature Founders or benefit Creators they find personally reprehensible. However, our commitment is that we will seek to ensure that the campaign itself will always hold to our community values.
Some tangible, hypothetical—and extreme—examples may be helpful.
Example 1
A campaign seeks ‘a children’s alphabet book’ written by the leader of a white supremacist militia. Presume for a moment, that the campaign as written is careful to not, in it’s immediate content, run afoul of community guidelines. It is—perhaps intentionally—vague and open-ended around the subject matter of the book it holds out as its goal and there is nothing offensive in the manner of the campaign’s presentation itself.
This campaign would fail our editorial test.
Though perhaps for non-obvious reasons.
This campaign would not fail simply once it became clear to our editorial board who the intended Creator was—and what they have previously voiced and written etc.
Rather it it would fail because it is reasonably foreseeable that the content of the book would likely be in violation of our community guidelines if it was in keeping with the other known and expressed views of the Creator.
One can easily imagine any number of ways that such a superficially benign book could in fact seek to further the objectionable world view through how it presents or depicts different communities within the book, or how it introduces objectionable concepts and terminology etc.
That the intended audience of the campaign is also a vulnerable and highly impressionable group of children also weighs in favor of increased caution and concern.
(Related) Example 2
A campaign seeks ‘a top 10 favorite craft beers list’ curated by the very same white supremacist militia leader.
Presume for a moment, that the campaign as written is careful to not, in it’s immediate content, run afoul of community guidelines.
This campaign would not fail our editorial test.
In this specific case, it is not reasonably foreseeable that the content of such a simple requested list of beers would likely violate our community guidelines.
It’s always a theoretical possibility, and if we accumulate evidence of a particular Creator twisting and distorting campaign goals to such ends we will take that into account going forward, but we won’t automatically assume the worst.
Example 3
A campaign seeks to have a particular actor cast in an upcoming movie roll.
The actor is an active member of a political party which has abolishing LGBTQ rights as a central and prominent goal and that the actor has previously written highly objectionable views on the same subject which clearly violate our community guidelines.
The campaign itself does not address or support any of those views and is wholly focused on how the actor’s prior acting skills demonstrate how good they would be in the targeted roll.
This campaign would not violate our editorial standards as we assess the campaign itself apart from the individual it benefits.
Example 4
Let’s now examine two related but opposite campaigns.
One campaign is created to prominently and positively re-write the next iteration of a well known superhero as being part of the black LGBTQ community when that character has only previously been presented as a white, cisgender, heterosexual male.
This campaign would be welcomed—provided it is written and supported appropriately—as it seeks a more inclusive, diverse and creative future.
Suppose now, that—perhaps in response—another campaign was created to keep the same superhero as a white, cisgender, heterosexual male in the upcoming movie.
This campaign would fail our editorial commitment to our community guidelines as it is inherently neither inclusive nor creative, but only seeks to narrowly confine the future to an existing reality, and one which has not been inclusive.
It would fail this test regardless of how carefully it was written to otherwise meet our community guidelines.
Example 5
A campaign—otherwise not objectionable in it’s own construction—seeks to have a white supremacist, anti-LGBTQ activist interviewed as a guest on a particular podcast.
It is obviously foreseeable in all cases, that the objectionable views of the Creator will be expressed, which on their own would violate our community guidelines.
However, for our editorial purposes, how the particular podcast is likely to contextualize and address those views becomes the controlling factor.
If the podcast in question has a history of either supporting the same views, or failing to adhere to accepted journalistic best practices, the campaign would fail our editorial process. We won’t blindly platform views which are not in alignment with our community guidelines.
If the podcast was likely to challenge the views in alignment with our community guidelines, then we believe the broader value of that dialog merits allowing the campaign to proceed.
If the podcast adopts a neutral position but is likely to adhere to accepted journalistic best practices, we similarly believe in the value of free speech and the exchange of ideas and would allow the campaign to proceed.